OGC North American Forum to demo results of major interoperability testbed

On October 14th, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) will demonstrate the results of the eleventh OGC Interoperability Testbed. The demonstration is being organized by the OGC North American Forum. The US Geological Survey (USGS) is hosting the event, which will take place from 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon at the USGS Auditorium in Reston, Virginia.

The OGC North American Forum (NAF), a group of 53 OGC members in North America, addresses OGC standards requirements, OGC program coordination, outreach and education needs of government, academic, research and industry organizations in Canada, US and Mexico. The NAF provides a coordination mechanism to prioritize North American geospatial and location specific interoperability requirements and work towards incorporating these requirements into the OGC standards process.

In December 2014 the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) released a Policy Fact Sheet titled "Harnessing Climate Data to Boost Ecosystem & Water Resilience." The Fact Sheet notes OGC’s commitment to increase open access to climate change information using open standards. Testbed 11, sponsored by an international group of government agencies, is mentioned in the OSTP document.

Testbed 11 supports national climate-change preparedness by focusing on ways in which open standards support cross-community interoperability, urban-climate resilience (preparation for impacts of climate change), and secure exchange of spatial information in the context of the US National Information Exchange Model NIEM.

Nine Testbed 11 sponsors documented interoperability requirements and objectives for this activity. Thirty organizations selected to participate in Testbed 11 then developed solutions based on the sponsors’ use cases, requirements and scenarios described in a Call for Proposals. Participants’ solutions implement existing OGC standards as well as prototypes of possible interface and encoding candidate standards. Some of the prototypes may ultimately become OGC standards, revisions to existing OGC standards, or best practices for using OGC standards.

Testbed 11 Sponsors include:

• European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL)
• Land Information New Zealand (LINZ)
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)
• UAE Ministry of Interior Abu Dhabi Police GIS Center for Security (UAE ADP-GIS SC)
• UK Defense Science and Technology Lab (UK-DSTL)
• US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
• US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
• US Geological Survey (USGS)

Testbed participants tied numerous sponsor requirements together within the Flood / Climate Change scenarios to demonstrate interoperable solutions to meet these goals:

• Advance OGC Architecture with respect to REST and SOAP design patterns for synchronization of geodata across data stores, as well as storage and synchronization of geodata in GeoPackages;
• Evaluate approaches to JSON and GeoJSON encodings as well as vector data and image streaming in the OGC standards framework;
• Integrate high-resolution simulation models into geospatial infrastructures using the OGC Web Processing Service;
• Advance use of Linked Data and semantic enabling of OGC Web Services, with a special focus on Hydrographic Data;
• Advance use of OGC Catalog Services;
• Advance use of spatially-enabled Social Media data;
• Advance use of a common symbology that can be used to share common operational pictures in an international environment;
• Advance compliance tests for the OGC Web Feature Service and Catalog 3.0 Service interface standards;
• In Aviation, advance a Digital Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) validation service and enrichment service and advance use of Aviation Feature Schema (AFX). Also develop guidance on using geometrical constraints in the Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR) (an Object Management Group standard).

Those testbed goals sort into these technology threads:

• Urban-Climate Resilience (UCR) Thread
• Cross-Community Interoperability (CCI) Thread
• Aviation Thread
• Geospatial Enhancements for NIEM (Geo4NIEM) Thread

The demo results have enormous potential for the testbed stakeholders – both technology users and the technology providers – and for the world at large. The return on the shared investment in spatial standards far exceeds the costs, not unlike the return on the original shared investments in http and html.

Some of the Testbed 11 sponsors have already begun assembling interoperability requirements for Testbed 12, which will begin in the fall. The sponsors and the OGC invite other organizations to bring their requirements into the discussion.

If you want to learn more about the upcoming Testbed 11 demo and/or the upcoming Testbed 12 opportunity, please contact Lew Leinenweber, Director Interoperability Programs (lleinenweber [at] opengeospatial.org). Learn moreabout the 15 year old OGC Interoperability Program in which OGC testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments are organized, planned and managed.

Join the OGC North American Forum! The networking, coordination and public exposure provided by the Forum help members maximize the value of their OGC membership. Contact the OGC at Email Contact.

The OGC® is an international geospatial standards consortium of more than 510 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.

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OGC requests comment on Discussion Papers extending access to 4D weather data collections

Members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) request comments on a proposed OGC Discussion Paper "A MetOcean Metadata Profile for WCS 2.0" and the supporting Discussion Paper "OGC Web Coverage Service Interface Standard - Coverage Collection Extension".

These proposed Discussion Papers specify data and service model extensions to the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) Interface Standard that optimize use of that standard for 4-D x/y/z/t spatio-temporal climatology, meteorology, and ocean (“MetOcean”) coverages. 4-D x/y/z/t coverages can be arranged in sets. New request types are added over WCS Core and Extensions for spatio-temporal search and the encoding of MetOcean specific metadata. .

Details can be found in the candidate OGC discussion papers titled A MetOcean Metadata Profile for WCS 2.0 and OGC(R) Web Coverage Service Interface Standard – Coverage Collection Extension. Please email your comments to Peter Trevelyan (peter.trevelyan [at] metoffice.gov.uk).

The OGC is a not for profit international geospatial standards consortium of more than 510 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available standards. OGC’s open standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org/contact.


Contact:

Email Contact

OGC requests comment on standard model and encoding for timeseries data

Members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) request comments on proposed OGC standards for the representation of observations as timeseries, that is, a sequence of data values which are ordered in time.

The OGC Timeseries Profile of Observations and Measurements candidate standard is a conceptual model for the representation of observations data as timeseries, with the intent of enabling the exchange of such data sets across information systems. This standard does not define an encoding for the conceptual model, however there is an accompanying OGC candidate standard which defines an XML encoding (OGC TimeseriesML 1.0 - XML Encoding of the Timeseries Profile of Observations and Measurements). Other encodings may be developed in future.

These candidate OGC standards are available for review at www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/137. Comments are due by 2015-09-17.

The OGC is a not for profit international geospatial standards consortium of more than 510 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available standards. OGC’s open standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

Contact: Email Contact

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OGC requests comment on draft charter for temporal standards working group

Members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) request comments on the draft charter for a proposed OGC Standards Working Group (SWG). The OGC Temporal Well Known Text (WKT) for Calendars Standards Working Group is being formed to adapt existing standards to provide the capability to represent and encode temporal metadata within data sets and protocols that use customised calendars.

OGC Members proposing the OGC Temporal WKT for Calendars Standards Working Group have identified a number of communities who use time representations based on calendars which are not the Gregorian calendar. In order to provide interoperable representations of this metadata, extensions to the current metadata standardisation provision in ISO 19162 (Well Known Text), and potentially in other associated standards, are required. This work will involve adaptations and extensions to existing OGC standards and to ISO standards developed in conjunction with the OGC.

A uniform standard for representing temporal metadata within data sets and protocols has particular business value for the Climate Science community, who make extensive use of such temporal representations. This standards work will also benefit the wide range of communities who are looking to make use of climate data to interact with their own data sets to facilitate further applications. The planned standardization effort will also support uniform communication about time in a very wide range of applications unrelated to climate.

The draft charter is available for review atportal.opengeospatial.org/files/64317. Comments should be sent via email to Email Contact and are due by 27 August, 2015.

The OGC is an international geospatial standards consortium of more than 510 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

Contact:
Email Contact

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OGC invites organizations to co-sponsor a major spatial interoperability testbed

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites organizations with specific spatial data integration requirements to explore a low cost, highly effective, high return on investment testbed approach to meeting those requirements. OGC testbeds are rapid prototyping activities that solve spatial interoperability issues. Since 1999, 11 major testbeds (and many pilot projects, interoperability experiments, plugfests etc.) have been organized by the OGC to benefit major organizations seeking to solve spatial data integration problems that no single vendor or integrator could solve for them.

From start to finish, OGC Testbeds take from 9 to 12 months to complete.

In the planning phase of each testbed, sponsor teams consisting of from 2 to 12 organizations pool requirements, document requirements in use cases, and weave the use cases together in a realistic “grand challenge” scenario. In the implementation phase, multi-vendor teams of expert system architects and developers “rapid prototype” and then document data encodings, service interfaces and best practices that meet the specified interoperability requirements. In a testbed’s final demo event, the participants show what they have accomplished. The encodings and interfaces often become candidate OGC standards that are vetted, voted on and then adopted by the OGC membership as open international standards. The work frequently involves coordination with other standards organizations.

Testbed 12 sponsors will help shape standards that expand the geospatial technology market, improve choice, and ensure market availability of interoperable system components and solutions over time. Sponsors’ investments are further leveraged by technology providers who do some of their testbed work as an in-kind contribution. In exchange, providers gain expertise, ideas, contacts, visibility and early marketplace insight and advantage.

Organizations frequently join OGC in response to innovations in areas such as integrated indoor/outdoor location services, small cell and near-field communications, web service based building information models (BIM), augmented reality, new database technologies for large-scale data, Internet of Things, smart grid, LiDAR and drones. These technologies and trends provide new capabilities, but they also create new requirements for converging technologies and for sharing, communicating and integrating spatial data. Ongoing OGC standards work, which takes place largely in OGC testbeds, provides the world’s technology users with their principal means of integrating these technologies and avoiding lock-in to proprietary vendor ecosystems. The OGC’s Testbed 11 web page provides information about the process and results of the recently concluded OGC Testbed 11.

The OGC invites organizations to become co-sponsors of the upcoming OGC Testbed 12. Organizations that join early maximize OGC staff’s ability to match those organizations’ requirements with other organizations’ requirements, thus reducing each sponsor’s share of the cost. Participants – IT providers, universities, and research organizations – will provide a mix of compensated and in-kind resources to prototype and demonstrate candidate standards, best practices, compliance tests, reference implementations, and proposed enhancements or revisions to existing standards and practices. Testbed 12 kickoff will be in September. Now is the time to get involved in the planning. To learn more, contact Terry Idol, Executive Director, OGC Interoperability Program – tidol [at] opengeospatial.org.

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